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Monday, 11 January 2016

It’s been
a long time since the Addiction Research Group have thrilled you with our
research roundup but that doesn't mean we haven’t been hard at work. Here is a
summary of our last year’s work! We’ll start with an overview of just some of the
papers that have been published in the last 12 months (there was not space to
cover them all so the remaining can be found at the end of this post).

A paper by Abi Rose, Charlotte Hardman and
Paul Christiansen published in Appetite investigated the effects of alcohol
consumption and the environment on snacking behaviour. In either a bar lab or
sterile lab, social drinkers received a priming dose of alcohol or soft drink
and completed a taste test, as well as ratings of alcohol, snack and appetite
urge. Participants in the alcohol group consumed more calories (including drink
calories) compared to the soft drink group; therefore, alcohol calories were
not compensated for by a reduction in food intake, suggesting alcohol may
disrupt appetite signals or make food more appealing. Additionally, the results
demonstrated that a larger proportion of unhealthy snacks were consumed in the
bar lab, particularly in people who were disinhibited. This suggests particular
personality characteristics increase susceptibility to alcohol’s effects on
eating.

Another study by Paul Christiansen, Rosie
Mansfield, Jay Duckworth, Matt Field and Andy Jones published in Drug and
Alcohol Dependence involved a group of social drinkers completing variations of
the alcohol-related visual probe task. This was to investigate whether
incorporating eye-tracking and personalised stimuli to the task would improve
its internal reliability. The results demonstrated that internal reliability
was highest for personalised (versus general) alcohol stimuli and for
eye-tracking (versus manual reaction time) measures of attentional bias.
Therefore, the study suggests that incorporating these methods can improve the
internal reliability of the alcohol-related visual probe task.

A paper by Lisa Di Lemma, Joanne Dickson, Pawel
Jedras and Matt Field was published in Frontiers in Psychology. This reported
results from three studies which investigated the independence of the approach
(indulge) and avoidance (abstain) motivational orientations for alcohol.
Participants watched brief videos and completed self-report and implicit
measures of alcohol-related approach and avoidance. In all three studies, it
was found that self-report increases in approach inclinations were accompanied
by parallel decreases in avoidance inclinations and vice versa. This suggests
that subjective approach and avoidance inclinations for alcohol tend to
fluctuate in parallel, which questions their degree of independence. However, the study also involved a combined
analysis of data from all three studies. This in fact demonstrated that changes
in inclinations to drink were partially independent of changes in inclinations
to avoid alcohol.

Andy Jones,
Lisa Di Lemma, Eric Robinson, Paul Christiansen and Matt Field published a meta-analysis in Appetite investigating lab
studies of inhibitory control training (where participants learn to associate
appetitive cues with inhibition of behaviour) for appetitive behaviour change.
They found that the effects of inhibitory control training on behaviour were
comparable to those produced by other psychological interventions, suggesting
that it is efficient for short-term behaviour change in the laboratory.

Natasha Clarke,
Matt Field and Abi Rose published a paper in PLoS One on the effect of a
brief personalised intervention for students. The study found that an active
control (engaging with alcohol-related information) was just as effective at
reducing alcohol consumption and binges as the personalised feedback
intervention at a two-week follow-up. This suggests providing information can
be just as efficient as more time consuming methods, if the information is
engaged with.

And
finally, last but by no means least, Helen Ruddock, Joanne Dickson, Matt Field
and Charlotte Hardman published a study
in Appetite on the concept of food addiction. Participants completed a
questionnaire online which asked whether they perceived themselves to be a food
addict. The answers were analysed and gave an interesting insight into
self-perceived food addiction. Characteristics of people who defined themselves
as food addicts included eating for reward, being preoccupied with food, low
self-control, frequent food cravings, increased weight and a problem with
certain foods. This qualitative study is the first to provide insight into
beliefs about food addition in both self-perceived food addicts and
non-addicts.

We’ve been travelling around as usual. Matt, Andy,
Paul, Eric and Charlotte didn’t have to go far to attend the British
Psychological Society (BPS) symposium in Liverpool in May. Matt gave a
symposium at the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive
Psychotherapies (BABCP) in Warwick and attended the British Association for
Psychopharmacology (BAP) in Bristol, both in July. Matt and Andy also travelled
to York and presented at the Society for the Study of Addiction conference.

PhD students have been busy too. A big group of us travelled
to Bristol in September and presented research posters at the UK Centre for
Tobacco and Alcohol Studies (UKCTAS) early career meeting. Andy, Inge, Jay and
Natasha ran their first ever workshop on novel methods in public health
research at the UK Centres for Public Health Excellence (UKCRC) conference in
Edinburgh in November. A bunch of us also went to Newcastle in December for the
UK Society for Behavioural Medicine (UKSBM) conference, where Eric, Lisa,
Graeme gave talks and Andy, Mrunal, Lisa and Natasha presented their posters.
And finally back round to Liverpool for the North West Alcohol Conference (NWAC)
in November, of which a brilliant summary by Laura, Graeme and Panos can be
found here.

Finally we welcome our new PhD student Laura Baines,
who has done a brilliant job covering some of our new published research in
this roundup.

Thanks for reading. We promise we won’t leave it as
long till the next time! If you have any questions contact Prof Matt
field, and if you are interested in taking part in
research you can find our current studies here.

Other
(equally as important!) papers published by the Addiction Research Group in
2015:

Monday, 4 January 2016

Recently PhD students Laura Baines, Graeme Knibb and Panos
Spanakis attended the North West Alcohol Conference. Here we summarise the
highlights.

Graeme Knibb

Following a welcome address from Dr. Steve Hood, Councillor
Roz Gladden (stepping in for Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson) provided the keynote
address. According to Cllr Gladden, the North-west performs the worst in the UK
for the amount of years lost due to alcohol; we have the highest hospital
admission rate for alcohol-related injuries and more alcohol-related crimes
than anywhere outside of London. She went on to outline five areas which should
be addressed to reduce the impact of alcohol in the North-West (prevention and
early intervention, treatment and recovery, community safety, protecting
children and control). However, while Cllr Gladden provided examples of
charitable and community organisations addressing these issues, in an ‘age of
austerity’ how would the council address alcohol-related problems? One audience
member asked what impact government cuts would have on council-led alcohol
services. Cllr Gladden responded by stating that there are going to be severe
in-house cuts and she cannot say that “…this is not going to affect services...”
but she did state that the council intends to do their best “... to ensure it
doesn’t impact as much as possible...”

While at times the talk threatened to spill over into
political rhetoric, Cllr Gladden did discuss the prospect and practicalities of
a region specific minimum unit pricing (MUP) policy. Due to intense lobbying
from the alcohol industry, plans for national MUP have fallen by the wayside.
However, with the creation of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’, Cllr Gladden believes
it would be possible to introduce MUP in the North-west. But is this likely to
happen? Later that day an audience member asked if the threat of devolved MUP
would lead to devolved lobbying. The answer from two North-West councillors was
a unanimous ‘yes’ and an ominous “...we need to be ready for it”.

Although absent Professor Gerard Hastings (University of
Stirling) delivered a pre-recorded presentation concerning alcohol marketing.
Prof Hastings was particularly concerned with the way in which digital
marketing has become less recognisable as advertising and how social networking
sites now enable consumers to become marketers themselves (through ‘shares’ and
‘likes’). He used Facebook’s
recent advertising partnership with Diageo, the owners of the Smirnoff and
Guinness brands, to highlight that the balance of ‘power’ is massively tipped towards
advertisers. Prof. Hastings believes that Public Health must ‘fight back’ and
outlined three possible public health responses. These were; containment (by regulation),
counteraction (by counter advertising) and critical capacity building in the
population (e.g. by increasing media literacy). These responses together, Prof
Hastings suggests, can restore the balance of power between citizens and
advertisers. He acknowledged that this would take time and international
measures are needed but, in his words, “...it can be done, because it has to be
done.”

Laura Baines

Professor Sir
Munir Pirmohamed, Director of the MRC Centre for Drug Safety Sciences in
Liverpool and Executive Director of Liverpool Health Partners (LHP) focused his
talk on the development of an academic health science centre, The Liverpool
Alcohol Research Alliance (LARA).
LARA is a multi-disciplinary group established to connect alcohol research
areas, focusing on improving alcohol interventions as well as prevention of
alcohol addiction. Professor Pirmohamed stated that the overall ambition is to
become an organisation recognised worldwide for cutting edge research in
alcohol related issues and to develop a Liverpool alcohol research centre. This
is to improve patient benefit and to develop effective drugs to treat alcohol
dependency. Prof. Pirmohamed informed us that LARA already has access to
primary care data for more than 13 million patients, meaning it is the first
group in the world to have access to this type of data on this scale. With more
than 10 publications in preparation, the growth of the organisation sounded
very promising.

The next talk focused on young people’s
perspectives of alcohol marketing and was given by Steve Morton, a health and
wellbeing manager for the North West. Specifically, Mr Morton focused on the
effect alcohol advertising may be having on adolescent drinking and their
perceptions of alcohol use. Many studies
have reported that exposure to alcohol marketing is
associated with an increased likelihood that adolescents will begin to consume
alcohol, emphasising Mr Morton’s
point that it may be important to tackle the vast amount of advertising. After
all, the advertising of Tobacco is illegal so why is this not the case for
alcohol? The speaker then proceeded to emphasise the sheer amount of alcohol
marketing that is visible to young people. We were shown a wide variety of
advertisements including special offers in shops, bus stops, pub advertising
signs and various sports sponsorships. These photographs were taken by adolescents
themselves emphasising how visible alcohol advertisements are to young people.
The speaker therefore believed it was obvious something needed to be done. With
his ultimate aim being to get a ban on alcohol advertising introduced, he
argued that warning labels could be added to bottles, or alcohol harm could be
incorporated more profusely into education.

Panos Spanakis

A very interesting talk was given by Dr. Angela Attwood,
from Bristol University, regarding “The Psychology of drinking”. More
specifically, Dr. Attwood’s talk was focused on the concept of “choice
architecture interventions”. Choice architecture interventions aim at changing
aspects of the microenvironment where a given behaviour occurs. That could
entail changing some properties of the environment or changing the place where
an item or a product is located or even both.
For example, the loudness of the music in a club can affect how quickly
customers will return at the bar to order another drink. A more practical example of how choice
architecture could be implemented to tackle alcohol abuse problems derives from
a current study in Bristol University about glass shape. Researchers in Bristol
University found that straight
glasses make people drink slower, compared to the usual carved glasses used
in most pubs, bars and clubs. A possible explanation for this effect could lie
on volume estimation. A simple visual heuristic to estimate volume is height,
so that the higher the liquid appears to be in the glass, the larger the volume
of the liquid. Although this can be a quite accurate estimation with straight
glasses, curved glasses made participant overestimate the volume of drink still
left in their glasses. Consequently, curved glasses may drive people to drink
faster, as it appears like they have more drink in their glasses than they
really do. Concluding, Dr Attwood summarized the different environmental
properties that could be of relevance for alcohol choice architecture
interventions. These properties might have to do with the ambience of a place
(at that point she made a complimentary reference to the special bar laboratory
in University of Liverpool that simulates a real pub environment), the
labelling of alcoholic drinks, as well as their presentation and the sizing of
the portions.

A very informative workshop was delivered by Dr. Adam Mackridge,
from LJMU School of Pharmacy, and Deirdre Boyd, director of the DB Recovery
Services. Both speakers talked about what constitutes effective support for substance
abuse and how effective support should look like. Dr. Adam Mackridge made a case about how
community pharmacies could be utilized to tackle alcohol related problems. Community
pharmacies provide unique advantages, as the broad range of the population that
visits them and the possibility for instant provision of advice. A recent
project, that he described, included using community pharmacies to screen large
amounts of people for alcohol risks. Overall, there were positive outcomes, as
the pharmacists were quite effective at screening the population and the public
really accepted the whole procedure. In a restricted number of follow ups that
were made possible, people were actually found to have reduced consumption
after the screening and the consultation that happened in the pharmacy. Deirdre
Boyd gave a talk about the crucial importance of good practice and the
challenges faced by people with addiction problems. She explained how
abstinence is only part of the rehabilitation process. Another crucial aspect of this process is to
learn to recognize and control emotions that drive alcohol related behaviours.
She explained how addicts learn life skills, as adults, that healthy
individuals normally learn as children. To emphasize this, she explained how in
the 12 steps of recovery from alcohol abuse only the first has to do with
alcohol consumption itself. All the rest are mainly focused in leaving your old
life.